


Workplace Hazards

by subtropicalStenella



Series: Playing the Long Game [4]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Aftercare, Alien Biology, Come Eating, Creampie, Drug-Induced Sex, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Intercrural Sex, Kink Discovery, Marathon Sex, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oral Sex, Past Drug Use, Rough Sex, Sex Pollen, Trope Subversion, Vaginal Sex, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 19:24:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella
Summary: Oh noes sex pollen! I wanted to see what happens in an established relationship, with only one party affected (for the most part) + my favorite "humans are the xenosexy ones".





	Workplace Hazards

“ _ D’Rer!”  _

 

It is  _ incredibly  _ gratifying to see the Devaronian flinch and cower behind her datapad as she rounds on her. Even if the reaction is slightly delayed by whatever the skinny bint is so obviously high on.

 

“What the _hell_ are you trying to pull here? You told me I was shipping _processed_ ikathi pods,” she snarls, and seizes a fist-sized red-and-purple pod out of the broken, poorly sealed crate. It oozes unpleasantly in her hand, overripe and squishy, moreso on the ground when she hurls it down as hard as she can into an explosion of shiny gold spores and slime. “Does that look processed to you? Because that looks like a _class nine_ _biohazard_ to me, d’Rer. Do you have any idea what this shit _does_ to Humans?!” 

 

_ She _ did, and so did Kanan, that's why he'd been wearing a damned respirator and gloves in the first place, in case there had been residual spores or a few underprocessed pods. Fat lot of good it did when his typical self-sacrificing tactics led to him knocking another dockworker out of the way of a falling crate, and subsequently taking direct hits from something like  _ half a dozen _ raw pods. One right to the face.

 

“There… might have been a few mistakes in the manifests regarding the stability of the shipment,” their 'client’ answers evasively. Oh that  _ tears  _ it. First, and  _ last  _ time they were working with this slimeball, fat paycheck or no.

“ _ Mistakes?” _

“Eh, typos. Y’know, Jenth, Senth, it all looks the same,” d’Rer drawls, rolling something around the back of her pointed teeth with her tongue. By the uneven width of her glassy pupils, it's probably a spice candy. Figures. Some of the people she ended up working with, honestly? She knew things were desperate with the Rebellion but this was scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard she wouldn't be surprised to find splinters in her ass.

 

“Yeah? Well your  _ typos _ just put my copilot in the  _ medbay!”  _ she snaps, gesturing emphatically to Kanan, slung between the shoulders of a Rodian and a Nautolan, who are holding him upright in the rickety, rattling decontamination shower. The Rodian ducks out and hauls Kanan's sopping sweater and undershirt over his head. It doesn't do much good, his warm brown skin already flushing hotter down his throat and chest, whatever spores had gotten into his clothing already affecting him. “What the  _ fuck  _ are my clients supposed to do with this? They were expecting  _ medicine _ not poison!”

“ _ Medbay? _ It's an  _ aphrodisiac _ , do you know how much people would pay for a hit of that shit? He should be thanking me,” d'Rer scoffs lazily, bringing her hands down to her hips and neatly sidestepping the question. She's honestly pissed and worried enough to  _ let  _ her.

“He should  _ thank  _ you for potentially  _ permanent _ nerve damage? It's an  _ aphrodisiac _ when it's diluted down to ten percent or  _ less _ and cut with sugar, it's a  _ nightmare  _ when raw!” she snarls, incredulous. The Rodian is going for Kanan's pants, and it's proving difficult with his boots still on, among other things. “ _ I’ll  _ thank you for the twenty percent bonus you're going to tack on to cover his medical expenses!”

“ _ Twenty percent?!”  _

 

Of course a shrinking profit margin is what brings Tam d’Fucking’Rer out of her spice haze.

 

“ _ And  _ another five as compensation for pain and suffering!” she adds, partially out of spite, partially on principle. 

 

D’Rer snorts and fucking well  _ leers  _ at Kanan, stripped down to his shorts and soaking wet, hair straggling into his face, being half-carried back their direction. He  _ should  _ look like a drowned lothcat, not, well, something out of the kind of magazine typically hidden under a mattress.

 

“Honey, he doesn't look like he needs 'compensation’ for  _ anything. _ ”

 

_ Excuse her?! _

 

“Don't get any ideas, lady,” Kanan growls, still hanging off the Nautolan and slicking his hair back out of his face with a murderous scowl, or at least as murderous as he can get with his pupils blown out so wide the bright turquoise iris darkens nearly to sea-green. “That ain’t for you. I got  _ standards  _ these days.” 

 

Unfortunately d’Rer misinterprets her gleeful grin at the insult as something else entirely, and smirks back at her. “Not in a few minutes you won’t, so I guess  _ you  _ should be thanking me, Captain.” 

 

“ _ Me?  _ You think  _ I’m  _ going to fuck this out of him?” she yelps indignantly, lekku stiff and still, tips pointed down and inward. “Have you  _ seen  _ a Human in rut? It's not pretty. Or you think that just because I'm  _ twi'leki  _ I'll hop on the first fat xenodick that happens to point in my direction?!”

“Yeah, my boyfriend would  _ love  _ that,” Kanan drawls, and bless him for still being able to think on his feet. She turns on him anyway, exasperated.

“You, go lay down before your cranial blood pressure crashes and you _fall_ down,” she snaps, poking him in the chest. The blush fades-and-reappears, like the run on Scarif when he got ultraviolet burns from staying out swimming too long during their downtime, and she turns back to d’Rer so fast that a lek whaps Kanan in the shoulder. That is. _Oof._ It was just a glancing touch, only a few of the chemoreceptors along the underside catching a taste of his skin but _damn_ that is a lot of pheromones. He is _barely_ holding it together. Best get this over with.

 

“ _ You  _ are going to cough up that twenty-and-five percent in  _ cash _ , and you’d better hope I can find a medic within six parsecs of this shitheap of a space station or it's coming out of your _ hide. _ ”

“Ten-and-five, for the show,” d’Rer offers, now watching Kanan's ass.

“Twenty flat and we won't go to the port authority with your manifests and their  _ typos _ that let you skirt the licensing fees and safety regulations on imported psychotropics.”

“You wouldn't  _ dare,”  _ d’Rer hisses, stepping up into her space. She's never been considered particularly tall, but she still has a head on the Devaronian, even with the horns.

_ “Watch me, _ ” she snarls, shoving d’Rer back. “I'll pay the piracy fines with the bounty on your head. That's why you're outsourcing transport and forging manifests for this shipment anyway, isn't it?”

“Fifteen-and-five, and you finish the delivery,” d'Rer says, crossing her arms over her skinny chest.

“ _ Fine.  _ But if my copilot doesn't pull through, I'm coming back here to break off  _ both  _ your horns and shove them up your ass.” 

 

Chopper warbles his agreement at her heels, though probably out of general bloodthirstiness rather than any fondness for Kanan.

 

“Best get him to that medbay then,” d'Rer says, smirking, and goes back to her datapad. 

 

D’Rer ignores her furious snarl, but a lackey shoves a bag with the promised cold, hard credit chips into her hands. Fifteen-and-five percent, she counted.  _ Damn.  _ Should have started at thirty or better. Her datapad shows a pending digital deposit of their previously agreed-upon shipping fee, locked until delivery.

Kanan is leaning against the inner hallway, just inside the cargo bay, blaster drawn and ready to back her up as always, despite his obvious discomfort. He has one knee bent, leg braced against the wall to hide himself, which is kind of adorable, because it's not like she hasn't seen all of him, in  _ several _ positions and levels of undress. 

 

“Thought you were supposed to be lying down,” she says, eyeing him. He's visibly feverish, perspiring slightly on top of general sogginess from the decontamination attempt and flushed down to the hem of his shorts--which are straining at the seams against the pressure of his not inconsiderable erection, pushed down along his leg like the inconvenience it currently is.  

“And miss you ripping into some dirtbag? Wouldn't dream of it,” he drawls, safetying his blaster and stuffing the barrel down the back of his shorts. “Have I ever told you how much I love listening to you do that? Especially when I'm not the dirtbag.”

“Is that you talking or the spores?”

“Little bit of both, I think, and I have to say: _cranial blood pressure crash?_ I'm not _that_ big,” he demurs, but he's looking entirely too smug to be sincerely modest.

“I had to sell it,” she says, and bounces the bag of credits in her hand with a smile that quickly fades. “How are you  _ actually _ feeling? I know I oversold that too, but…”

 

He sighs, cocky, confident posture falling with his shoulders. “I've been better. Lightheaded, kinda nauseated, and, well…”

He glances significantly down. “That.”

She winces. “Please  _ actually  _ go lie down while I get us out of here?” she asks gently, hand on his bare shoulder. He inhales hard, his eyes fluttering closed as the muscles in his jaw tighten. His skin feels too warm even through her gloves. 

 

He swallows with difficulty and nods, dragging his fingers through his loose hair, pulling it back from his face. His hand is  _ shaking _ . “Thought I’d hit the fresher, see if that helped any, but… Yeah.”

“Alright, just call if you need me?” she starts and trails off when his eyes open, dark and hungry.

“More than I already do?” he asks quietly, his voice rough, sending a shiver down her spine. She can feel her lekku start to curl up slightly at the ends. He notices, his gaze tracking the motion.

“I can have Chopper take the helm,” she offers, and he shakes his head, tapping the door panel behind him and stepping back as it opens.

“I'll be fine, just get us out of here.”

 

She can hear the lock engage when it closes. He had keyed the door to lock from the  _ outside.  _ Goddess. He locked himself in. She can't get them into hyperspace fast enough.

Once she does, she stays in the pilot's chair for a while, suddenly nervous. No, nervous is the wrong word. Anticipatory, slightly intimidated, excited-but-slightly-guilty-about-it. It wasn't like he  _ chose  _ this but Kanan was…

She sighs gustily. Kanan was a  _ spectacular  _ lay, considerate and skilled and athletic and  _ Jedi stamina  _ was no joke, and he was, well,  _ gifted _ down there, even for a Human. Not to mention, for all her posturing at Tam d’Rer, Human biochemistry  _ did  _ things to twi'lek, their oxytocin and dopamine levels  _ so _ much stronger, enough that it seeped into their skin, enough to taste in a kiss, to feel when he-- 

 

Right. This is going to be a long, hard flight.

 

She stops by her room long enough to skin down to her shorts and undershirt, pulling her bra out the armhole on an afterthought. If his hands were already shaking enough that the buckles on her flightsuit and vest might be a challenge, a fiddly little bra clasp was out of the question. Everything goes down the laundry chute, and she sets the atmospheric scrubbers running when she walks by the panel on the way to the kitchen. Wouldn't do them much good to work this out of his system only to have him get hit with another reaction from spores in her clothes, or floating around in the recycled air. 

 

There's most of a case of sugary, electrolytic sportsball drinks in the chiller, and she hooks a finger into the rings holding half a dozen together, tucking another under her arm along with a box of ration bars--the nice ones with dried fruit and vegetables and actual meat. The drinks are designed for twi'lek biology, but it's only a little extra potassium salt compared to the Human kind. She can grab the water pitcher to make up the difference. This is… a lot to juggle and try to disengage a door at the same time.

The things she does for--

 

Whoops there goes the spare drink. Dammit.

 

Kanan  _ still _ isn't lying down, he's on his knees off to one side of the small room, hands resting on the tops of his thighs and clearly forcing himself to breathe on a slow, deep cadence. He always,  _ always _ fell back on breathing exercises to calm himself, it's a slightly ridiculous tell, and that's his posture for meditation, which he  _ has _ been doing more often, but now…

Now, stripped to his skin and flushing dark rose down his throat and chest and across his trembling shoulders, with a faint sheen of perspiration making every lean curve of muscle stand out in the dim light from the doorway and his naked, leaking cock standing up between his long, strong thighs…

 

He looks less like a serene warrior-philosopher and more like the tribute to some obscene deity. Well, at least with his eyes closed he won't see the way her lekku curled  _ right  _ up.  _ Damn,  _ Syndulla, good job picking this one up.

 

The drinks go on the floor next to the bunks with the ration bars, and when she stands up again, he's watching her through the tiny fringes of dark hair on his eyelids. Figures he'd be admiring her butt. She'd ended up with a broken caf mug their first Laundry Day together, when she had walked into the kitchen in her shorts with a basket of clean clothes. He’d overfilled his cup, burnt his hand and subsequently dropped it. By his later assessment, she could 'stop traffic’ in such a manner, if she so chose. 

 

“Kinda surprised you didn't start without me,” she says, tilting her head at him as she twists the top off the loose drink bottle.

 

He snorts softly, with a rueful smile. “I'd just end up rubbing my dick raw.”

“Previous experience?” she asks, smirking knowingly as she steps closer, holding the bottle out. He tenses all over as she does, his next breath ragged and desperate. Can he scent  _ her _ pheromones now, or is it just the fact that she's within arms’ reach that has his hands tightening on his legs enough that his short-clipped nails leave tiny crescents in his skin?

“Yes and no, because the good dealers  _ warn _ you, if you haven't done your own research on recreational enhancements,” he says, and very, very carefully takes the drink from her, like he has to think about every movement, make it deliberate. “But nothing this bad, this intense.”

She sighs  _ for  _ him while he drains the bottle in long gulps. “I figured. Honestly I'm kinda surprised you didn't come jump me in the cockpit either.”

 

A very long, very boring afternoon sitting in a queue for Alderaanian inter-system customs clearance had gotten significantly less boring when he discovered he could fit underneath the pilot's console in front of her, and then better still when it turned out they could both fit in the pilot's chair, if she was in his lap. It hadn't counted as irresponsible flying, because they  _ weren't _ , at the time.

He's shaking his head, eyes closed again. “I've done a lot of stupid shit with my dick, but letting it think for me isn't going to be on that list.”

A shaky breath in through his nose and out his mouth, flexing his fingers on his thighs and then lifting his hands long enough to crack his knuckles, one by one, a sideways way to release some of the tension. “So, no. I'm not going to touch you until you ask me to.”

 

Alright, so his choosing  _ not _ to fuck her stupid is apparently really,  _ really _ hot, and she's not exactly sure where her libido is going with that. It probably has something to do with the fact that this man, with all his supernatural strength and all his power, has leashed himself to kneel at her feet by the force of his will alone. Still…

 

“You think I'd tell you  _ no?  _ Especially when you're hurting like this?” They'd been sleeping together--sometimes actually sleeping, even!--for weeks now, and she's standing here in her underwear with her tits half out.

“I hope not, but I'll never take that option away from you,” he answers soberly, tensing ever so slightly along his spine.

 

_ Goddess.  _ How many twi’leki women heard  _ that  _ in their lifetime?

 

“I'm not going to ask you,” she starts softly, and he nods with another deep, steadying breath, probably about to say something ridiculous about finding a medbay. “I’m  _ telling  _ you to get over here and screw me into the floor before you  _ hurt yourself,  _ you self-sacrificing masochhfffft!”

 

She's not entirely certain how he went from kneeling in front of her to crowding her against the opposite wall, kissing her hungrily with his tongue in her mouth and one hand up her shirt. The other is shoved down the back of her shorts, blaster-callused fingertips skating across her tailbone, down the cleft of her ass and lightly over her asshole to rub rough, uneven circles over her second jil. It probably involved the Force. Her shirt ends up bunched over his wrist as he cups her breast in his hand, rolls her nipple between his thumb and first knuckle. His cock is _ hot _ against her skin, pressed between them as he leaves kisses down her throat, ruts against her bare stomach. 

 

“Kanan--”

 

She gets a vague mumble against her collarbone in response, her hands going to his hips as he pulls her closer, leans in to push her shoulders back against the wall. Goddess, even out of his head on sex pollen he’s still deadly serious about  _ ladies first _ , but the pressure of his hand under her ass, fingertips pressed against her jil to hold her against him, is too much too fast this time, spiking through her hard and sharp enough to make her gasp. “ _ Kanan--” _

 

He shifts enough to get his knee between hers, pulling her onto his thigh and using it as leverage to lift her up higher, his kisses moving down her collar to her breast, his beard a rough rasp over the sensitive skin before the warmth of his mouth closes over her nipple. Her fingers tangle in what's left of his wet ponytail out of habit, up on her toes and wobbling, struggling to keep her balance, and he  _ moans  _ into her skin. No, no that's  _ wrong,  _ he's quiet, he's always so quiet--

 

“Kanan _ , please _ \--”

 

That got him to stop, or at least slow down enough that she can breathe. His hands still as he pushes his forehead into her chest, but he can't stop the movement of his hips against hers. 

 

“Kanan, you'll be like this for a  _ while, _ ” she says gently, running her hands through his loose hair with a fond smile. “You'll get me off, I know you will, but you're hurting and if you're planning on trying that little double-or-nothing routine you’re so fond of, you’re going to make  _ me  _ overdose so please…”

 

He leans into her hand on his face, staring wild-eyed up at her.

 

“... just take me.”

 

He surges up to kiss her again, rough and sloppy and halfway across her chin on the first attempt, but that barely registers, because between the breaths he steals from her lips he's saying

 

“Fucking _ Force _ , I love you--”

 

His hands on her hips spin her around to face the wall, fast enough that one lek ends up wrapped around her neck, the other trailing down her spine with the tip squashed between them. His short fingernails leave welts across her tailbone as he rips the back of her shorts down. She's not sure if that's what made her cry out, or the punch-in-the-gut feeling from his face pushed between her lekku, the overabundance of chemoreceptors no longer protected by her headcover and reacting to his skin, lighting up all down the length of her sharply curved spine. 

 

“--and that's  _ all  _ me talking,” he tells the back of her neck, the base of her lekku, push-pulling her hips and shoulders until she's cantilevered out on her toes, face and breasts and forearms against the cool durasteel wall. 

 

“-- _ shit  _ timing, I know--” 

 

His middle fingers rub along her slit just once before plunging into her with an obscene, wet sound nearly lost in her startled whine.

 

“--but I do--”

 

A third finger has her clawing at the wall, her breath fogging the metal. He doesn't usually do that, doesn't  _ need  _ to do that, to stretch her open, not when he's so attentive and thorough that she's always soft and wet and wanting him, needing him, well before he starts to push his cock into her. 

 

“--so much it scares me,” he says, a hoarse whisper she almost misses when he pulls his fingers out, slicks his cock with her wetness and drags the head down her ass, rubbing over her jil mostly by accident before lining up with her slit, before he gets both his hands on her hips and  _ hauls  _ her backwards onto his cock with a feral, unreal growl and  _ fuck-- _

 

\--muffles another moan by  _ biting down  _ on the back of her neck. 

 

Fucking hells, if she needed another reminder that she's fucking an alien--like the scent and taste of him, the hair on his chest soft against her back, the-- _haha oh_ _fffuck_ \--the big _fat xenodick_ making a game attempt to rearrange her insides wasn't enough--then _that_ was it, no twi’lek would do that, it's too sensitive, and it makes her _scream_ but somehow it's still good, _so good_ , maybe just because it's Kanan. Because she's never reacted to a Human lover so strongly, enough that his endorphins, his pheromones _sing_ through her, a hyperintense feedback loop of sensation, pleasure-hormones and painkillers. All of it thundering through her, winding her up in a building wave. Goddess, is this how he feels _all the time_ , with the connections to other living things through the Force?

He leans into her, pushing her chest, her breasts against the wall, his fingers digging into her hips. The lek crushed between their bodies is making her dizzy, sparks and swirls of color flaring in the corner of her eye in time with every hard snap of his hips against her ass driving a sharp, helpless noise out of her, his breath and his mouth hot and wet on the roots of her lekku. It's rough and raw and too much, the stretch and depth of him, moreso when he moans raggedly and the force of his thrusts tilts her hips up impossibly far, enough that her feet actually lose contact with the floor for a moment, and he breathes her name into the back of her neck like a prayer as he comes.

_ That's _ right, that's her Kanan. She sighs gustily when his hands slide up from her hips to settle loosely at her waist and he slumps heavily against her back-- _ after _ he pulls her lek aside. 

 

“Better?” she laughs shakily. It's slightly muffled by the way the side of her face is still mashed into the wall. 

 

She gets absolutely nothing out of his response, a rough exhale somewhere between a relieved sigh and a sob, but the way his arms carefully encircle her speaks volumes. So does the way he gently kisses what will definitely become a nasty bruise on the back of her neck. He lets off some of the pressure that squashes her against the wall, and pets her stomach gently, slowly rubbing back-and-forth, low on her abdomen. They'd joked that they'd be able to see him inside her, but it wasn't possible, not without her on top and leaning back at an angle that was uncomfortable for both of them. 

 

“You didn't hurt me,” she assures him softly, covering his hand with hers. It had surprised her, at first, the way they fit together, that she could take all of him. He reaches up, pushing her lek aside with his hand stroking gently down the length to kiss her shoulder.

“I meant what I said,” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around her again.

“I know, love.”

 

She's never called him that out loud before, never said what he did, but it feels  _ right _ . So does his wide smile against her skin. It stays on his face between the warm kisses he scatters across the back of her shoulders, as his hands begin to move again, one sliding back up under her shirt and over her breast, the other down her stomach to her sex. His fingers slip down through the mess dripping out of her despite the thickness of his cock, his cum and her slick letting his fingertips dance over her first jil, sliding farther down to frame the edges of her slit and his cock, as she moans.

The leathery calluses on his palm rub over her nipple as he kneads the softness of her breast in his hand. That, and the warmth of his mouth on the root of her lek, his fingertips on her jil, the long stretch of his chest and stomach pressed against her back, all as her rocking back onto him. Short, small movements that has the base of his cock, his pubic bone--more fur!--rubbing against her second jil with all the heat of him buried inside her. It's slow and sweet and so good and inexplicably _ not enough,  _ not this time. Not after his wildness earlier, not with all that wildness still singing through  _ her  _ with every brush of his soft, wet mouth over her sensitive skin. The way her body feeds off his, off the chemical signals that translate into what he feels, means that normally they both start to settle down after he has his climax… but not this time. There's no warm, thick pleasure and relief, just the same  _ more more more  _ of hard arousal. So she reaches back, grabs a handful of his ass and  _ pulls _ , so his hips slap against her ass again, his cock pushing  _ deep  _ into her.

Oh, that's a  _ good _ noise, she could get used to him being this vocal. 

 

So she does it again.

 

_ “Hera--!”  _

 

There's that growl again, a warning maybe? And he's getting grabby.

 

“You're holding back,” she purrs, looking back over her shoulder, and he  _ groans _ , hiding in her lekku.

“H-Hera--”

“You didn't hurt me,” she tells him again. “You  _ won’t  _ hurt me. If I want you to stop I will  _ make  _ you stop.”

 

This time she pairs it with the sinuous, boneless, swivelling roll of her hips and spine that he  _ loves _ , especially when she deliberately tightens the muscles in her core, squeezes him, the cilia inside pulsing slowly as more of his cum slips out of her, splattering onto the floor. There's so  _ much  _ of it, with Humans, it won't all stay inside even with her cilia drawing it deeper, especially with them standing. The sound goes unnoticed with his desperate, sobbing attempt to breathe, his chest heaving. His hands are shaking again, his arms like spun durasteel cables around her.

 

“Do  _ you  _ want to stop?” she asks carefully.

“ _ Fuck  _ no.”

“You or the spores?”

“Yes. Both. Me,” he babbles, and manages a deep breath with his forehead pressed between her shoulderblades. “Caleb. If. If it gets bad, if you want me to stop, call me Caleb.”

“I will,” she tells him softly, and doesn't ask why that word, whose name that is.  _ Why  _ won't help him relax.

“Good. Legs,” he growls, and his teeth scrape over the meat of her shoulder in a rough kiss. 

“Wh--”

 

He twists slightly, dropping his shoulder to hook his arm under her knees, his other arm around the back of her shoulders as he scoops her up off her feet--oh,  _ legs _ \--and carries her back towards the beds. She's entirely unsurprised when he tosses her lightly into the bunk on her butt. Peeking out from under the top bunk at him is… a very, very nice view. Pretty blue-green eyes blown out almost black in the dimness, long, strong legs and long, lean abdomen and long, hard…  _ yeah _ . Very nice. And still dripping-wet with the proof that he is  _ so  _ very good to her.

Better still is the way he reaches in after her, but only partway, enough to catch the waistband of her shorts, still caught above her knees, and strip them off, flipping them somewhere over his shoulder. She sits up on her elbows, lets her thighs fall open for him, but instead of coming into the bed, he catches her by one ankle and the opposite knee to flip her onto her stomach. One lek  _ thwaps  _ lightly against the upper bunk, but she doesn't particularly mind, preoccupied with the opportunity to slide up onto her knees, stretching her arms out above her head and--oh, why not?--letting her hips sway enticingly from side-to-side.

She snorts a distinctly unsexy laugh into her own shoulder and lek when he swats her playfully across the ass, then hums a pleased sigh when his weight finally makes the mattress behind her sink a little. His hand smooths over the faintly stinging mark, followed by the warmth of his mouth kissing the hurt away, and then that warmth on  _ much _ nicer places, kissing and licking his cum from her slit. It's only briefly, but he draws another pleased hum out of her that melts into a hungry moan when his soft lips close around her second jil and he sucks slowly, his thumb rubbing over and around the first. 

 

The kisses continue up her spine, the brush of his goatee following after as he pushes the back of her shirt up, the contrast only intensifying the feeling of both, moreso when his lips reach her shoulders again and the hot, slick length of his cock rubs against her tailbone.

She rocks back on her knees, her spine curving down towards the mattress, until it's unclear if she is rubbing herself off on the underside of his cock, or if he's rutting against her ass and the firm softness of her swollen jil, her wet slit. His hands press the warm curves of her ass together as he kisses her shoulders, the back of her neck. Another roll of her hips has him gasping aloud and pushing his forehead into the mattress next to hers. She kisses his cheek, his temple, his lips when he turns to her, his hands moving up from her ass to pull her lek back over her shoulder, cupping her face in his palm and--yanking the pillow down from the head of the bed to stuff it under her. It changes the angle of their rocking hips just enough to let him slide back into her slit on the next stroke, hilting himself easily with a long, ragged sigh that she echoes. Hers spikes up into a sharp whine when he draws back again and  _ snaps _ his hips forward, his heat driving into her, his weight braced above her on his elbows.

_ That's  _ it, that's what she needs, hard and fast. She reaches up and back to grab a handful of his hair, close to his scalp like he showed her, and just hangs on for the ride. He doesn't have a twi’lek’s spine but  _ Goddess _ does he ever have the core strength and flexibility, the narrow space of the bunk not an issue with the way he rolls his hips. Deep, smooth thrusts ending with a short, filthy grind of his pubic bone against her second jil. But it's not innate instinctive ability, it's all skill and  _ effort  _ to make it good for her, to--how t-to--oh oh oh  _ fuck right there, right there _ \-- _!!! _

 

A soft, broken _fffffffuck-k_ breathed into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, his loose hair falling around her face, and he--he shifts forward, arms curling around her shoulders. More, he _doesn't stop moving_ , even though he _can't_ , because her jil have gone hot and tight, swollen and squeezing down, meant to hold a smaller, softer _twi’lek_ inside her, with the now-rhythmic rippling pulse of her cilia to draw a _twi’lek's_ cum into her. With Kanan, it… he always let her ride her orgasm out, because she locked down too tight for him to do anything else and nothing, _nothing,_ _nothing in this fucking Galaxy feels half as good as you..._

But now,  _ now  _ he keeps going. He can't thrust but  _ oh  _ he can keep up that sinful-hot grind on her jil, his hipbones against her ass as he drops down over her back, covering her, holding her close and keeping her wound up. The pressure, the tension in her core ebbs and flows with the rhythm of his hips but doesn't fade entirely, starts to build again as he rubs his face against the shifting tangle of her lekku, reaches up to pull one of them back over his shoulder to curve down along his spine.

The curling tip slides along the lean, tight muscle of his flexing shoulders as he turns his head, his goatee rasping on her other lek as he kisses it, right where it had smacked into the underside of the bunk. It's  _ sweet _ that he noticed, that he still remembered and is taking the time to pay attention through all of this, his long fingers wrapped around and stroking down the length. He punctuates every eager movement of his hips against hers, everything that keeps her hot and tight and pulsing around him, with searing kisses along her markings that have her squirming under him. His mouth is soft but she writhes and whines anyway, too sensitive, too reactive--

 

\--and _squeals_ indignantly when he rolls his wrist and _licks_ a long wet stripe along the exposed, delicate underside of her lek, rocking harder, _insistently,_ against her ass.

She instinctively pushes up on her hands as far as she can, which isn't much, because  _ his _ hand lands heavily between her shoulders and  _ shoves  _ her back down into the mattress, the tip of her molested lek wrapped around his wrist, curling  _ tighter  _ when he does it  _ again _ .

 

_ “K-Kanan!”  _ Wh-What--That’s-- _ He’s?!  _ That's _ disgusting,  _ he _ \-- _

 

\--it  _ is-- _ that's--why would he-- _ why _ does it send a rush of heat spiralling through her, why does it make her arch down into the mattress and rock back onto his cock? Why does she rut eagerly against the hand he shoves under her and down her stomach until his fingertips find her jil again? Why does she  _ want _ the feeling of his thighs smacking against her ass with each rough, uneven thrust of his hips when that  _ should  _ be far too much, too soon? Why does she shatter again in his hand with a high, broken wail that might have started out as his name, before stars started to explode behind her eyes?

At least he has the decency to flop  _ sideways _ this time instead of onto her when his orgasm follows hers, even if he can't get off of her completely yet, because he's  _ still _ hard and now he's stuck. Again.

 

He grunts and hisses when she eventually wriggles out from under him, rolling onto her back while he curls up on his side around her, one of her legs slung over both of his. A lek has fallen over his face, but he appears to be too focused on rediscovering how air works to care, his arm across her stomach and the wet, hard thickness of his cock between her hip and his stomach. 

 

“You  _ licked  _ my  _ lek _ ,” she informs him, entirely too breathless to sound as scandalized as she wants to. 

 

Which is  _ very,  _ especially when his response is to snort laughter into her armpit before lifting her lek off his head to grin cheekily at her. “You  _ liked  _ it.” 

 

That's beside the point. 

 

“What the  _ hell _ even--what were you--?” 

“Not exactly difficult to figure out,” he says, and nuzzles into her shoulder, letting her lek flop down. “The way you react to, y’know. Me.” 

 

She groans exasperatedly and he pulls her tight against him, kissing her shoulderblade.

 

“All joking aside, I won't do it again, if--”

“I didn't say _that…_ just...” she mumbles hastily. If her lekku weren't already blushing bright emerald from all the sex, they would be lighting up from tip to root. It was just a lot, and weird, and _dirty_ and...

He lifts her lek up again with another smile, doesn't make her explain. “Noted.”

“But first, break time,” she says, and reaches up to smack him twice across the ass and  _ determinedly  _ changing the subject. “C’mon champ, need to get some fluids in you.” 

 

And herself, but she's not going to say so and give him that kind of easy access to a dirty joke.

 

He burrows into her lekku, mumbling something about not wanting to move or not being  _ able _ to move, until she pokes him repeatedly in the stomach. He flinches and shifts away from her, his persistent erection rubbing against her side. 

 

“ _ Nope,  _ c’mon, you're not done and I don't want you to pass out.”

 

One last kiss to her shoulder and he sits up slowly with a low groan, reaching over and past her towards the supplies. He can't get to them without dislodging her legs, and instead flicks his wrist, dragging the whole case across the floor with a grasping gesture while she snickers. The box of ration bars had already fallen off the pile. He made the Ghost rattle again with that last one, which says a lot about how  _ she's  _ doing, if she's only just noticed.

He sprawls over the top of her, hanging off the edge of the bunk to crack one of the drinks out of the case, fighting clumsily with the plastic and wrenching the top open. He gets halfway through it before he pauses, grabs a second, opens it, and and balances it on her chest, condensation dampening her shirt.

 

“You either,” he says, and she sits up on her elbows. Cheap sportsball drink has never tasted so good. 

“I’m fine, love,” she starts, and he smirks, turning a bit to look at her legs, still slung over his. Still trembling, occasionally. 

“Sure you are,” he drawls,  “Giving you the shakes is fun, but not when it's exhaustion.”    
  
Not exhaustion yet, but… “You've played with this stuff before, right? How… how long until it wore off?”    
  
He holds up three fingers, wiping his mouth on his other wrist.   
  
“Three hours?” By the chrono, between the time since he'd been affected and… well… all of this... they were over the halfway point, but that was for a normal, recreational dose.   
  
“Three rounds,” he corrects, with a wry twist of his mouth, propping his head on his fist. “Dunno how long it lasted though, on account of it mixes  _ real _ good with kik.”   
  
… which fucks around with perception of time, would make everything feel like it lasted forever, would draw out the intensity, the literal-in-his-case groundquaking pleasure, and…

 

“Well unfortunately I'm fresh out,” she tells him, and tries to stuff the sudden upwell of inexplicable insecurity into a mental box.   
“This is better, with you,” he murmurs, reaching for her hand with his free one, squeezing her fingers.   
  
How did he...?    
  
"Are you reading my mind again?" she asks, squinting suspiciously at him.   
"It doesn't work like that," he says--which isn't a  _ No _ \--and screws the top back onto his empty bottle before flipping it across the room.

 

She rolls her eyes and does the same with her bottle, then reaches up to his face with a fond smile and a kiss. He follows gladly, his hands running up her sides and under her shirt to her breasts, his mouth warm on hers as he gently rolls her nipples under his fingers, follows the curves of her breasts with his hands. He's still tangled up in her legs, over and under her at once, but if she shifts  _ here _ and wriggles  _ this  _ way, she can get him lined up again and--

 

\--he can hook his arm under both her knees, hoisting her butt into the air and away from his hips.

“Hera--” 

“ _ Kanan _ ,” she replies, and continues to squirm, grinning. Nothing is on target but everything is wet and messy enough that it doesn't matter, as long as she can rub something of hers against him, she's helping, right?

“We won't get paid if we don't deliver because you can't walk tomorrow,” he growls through gritted teeth, his arm like a vise around her legs. 

“I'm  _ just the pilot _ , Spectre  _ One _ ,” she teases, still grinning and throwing his  _ insistence _ that he appear to take leadership on jobs to give them an extra layer of security, back in his face. “I can sit in my nice comfy chair.  _ You _ , on the other hand…”

She kicks a leg free, mashes her foot into his face until he laughs and shoves it over onto his shoulder. 

 

“It hurts, doesn't it, if you stop?”

He sighs, leaning his head sideways onto her ankle. “How'd you know?”

“You get a tic in your jaw when you're trying to tough something out,” she says, and taps the ball of her foot against his temple. “It's been there for a while, love.”

 

And she still wasn't getting any of whatever hormone cocktail made Human males just  _ collapse  _ after orgasm. If nothing else, whatever he was feeling was intensifying.

Or building up in  _ her  _ system, that was slightly worrying.

 

He sighs again, and lifts her other leg up onto his shoulder, wraps his arm around her thighs. The change in position squeezes her legs together against his chest as he leans forward, folding her mostly in half, and shifts up onto his knees. His cock slides between the softness of her thighs, and he kisses her gently.

“Compromise?” he purrs, and she wriggles a bit more, kicks her feet to make sure they won't smack into the underside of the upper bunk. 

 

This isn't something they do often--because it's a  _ tease _ for her, because he rubs against her sex and her thighs and ass without consistently touching anything  _ important _ with her legs together like this, but… that's what  _ she _ needs right now, it's good without being overwhelming for her and  _ damned  _ good for him.

Apparently threading her hands through his hair and slipping her tongue into his mouth is answer enough for him to start up again, his arm around her knees, his free hand sliding around the back of her neck to hold her close and send more reactive shivers down her spine.

 

His kisses are slow and warm, and he presses his forehead to hers, his eyes softly closed as he rubs the back of her neck and the roots of her lekku. His chest pushes against her legs, the soft hair almost tickling the back of her knees as he rolls his hips. His cock slips easily back and forth between her thighs, sliding on his own spent cum and her slick, the head pushing into her stomach until she pushes back with her legs.

Partially because it's difficult to breathe, squashed in half like this, partially because she wants to  _ see,  _ wants to watch the fat, blood-flushed head peek out between the curves of her thighs, rubbing against her sex, the flare pushing her folds apart to slide unevenly over her first jil. He has to tilt his head a bit sideways and her shins end up flat against the underside of the bunk, a bolt digging into her ankle, but  _ oh  _ he's such a pretty sight. Blushing dark and warm down his chest with the tendons in his wiry forearms standing out as he clings to her legs, his cockhead almost purple and swollen, shiny with the precum dripping onto her stomach, his breath sawing through his parted lips. It turns into a sharp gasp when she reaches for him, her fingertips brushing over the soft, sensitive skin until he thrusts harder against her legs, seeking her touch, his eyes snapping open.

 

She smiles coyly up at him, tilts her head among the loops of her shifting lekku, bites her lip just to draw his attention, pretty sure she makes a damn good picture herself.

Especially when she reaches up, pulls the hem of her loose tank up to bare the stretch of her stomach, then farther. She has to shift a bit so the slack rides up her back and she can get it up to her collarbones, let him see the way her breasts  _ bounce _ with the impact of his body against hers.

His free hand drops to her stomach, slides upwards to her breast, and she smirks, catching him before he can do more than brush the backs of his knuckles along the curve. Instead she pulls it up to her mouth for a kiss, licks his fingertips. He tastes like her, and he sounds like she's  _ tearing _ his next climax out of him with every teasing lap of her tongue, sucking his fingers in time with the thrust of his hips. 

 

“ _ Fucking  _ hells,” he breathes, and hooks his fingers, pressing down on her tongue until her lips part on a soft, hungry moan. It might be a tease, it might be haphazard, uneven pressure on her jil, her slit, but it's  _ good _ , it's perfect, winding her back up like a spring without the numb almost-hurt of overstimulation. She gives him one last lick, threading her tongue between his fingers before her lips close around him and she sucks  _ hard,  _ drawing off his hand with a loud  _ pop _ that makes him gasp. The slap of his hips against her thighs comes faster now, harder.

“Gonna cum for me, love?” she purrs, low and husky, kissing his fingers whenever the head of his cock pushes between her legs, rubs against her, slicks under her fingertips and against her stomach. “Paint me up pretty?”

“ _ Ssshit--” _

 

This might be the most she's gotten him to  _ swear _ too, but then again, he always was weak for her voice. 

 

“Come on, love,” she prompts, and it's so  _ easy _ to call him that, squeezing her thighs together, grinning when he falls forward with another ragged gasp, bracing himself on his hand and folding her in half again as he thrusts wildly between her legs until--

“Oh  _ fffuck, Hera--”  _

 

And he stills, his face buried in her throat as he streaks her stomach and thighs and  _ breasts  _ in thick white stripes.

This time he collapses onto her, his knees giving out entirely. Whatever he mumbles into her slightly squashed lek and the mattress might be an apology, and she rolls her head sideways to press a giggly kiss to his temple.

 

“Shove over,” she tells him fondly, pushing both feet into his side. He groans and somehow manages to flop harder, gone completely boneless while she snickers.

 

This time she wriggles over a bit, enough to be able to drum her heels on his butt. “Shove  _ over.” _

He groans again, rolls onto his back, his hands automatically going to her hips when she follows, straddles his waist. 

 

“We’re going to need to hit the fresher,” he laughs tiredly, his thumbs smearing through the cum all over her stomach and the tops of her thighs. There's a particularly aesthetically pleasing splatter on her left breast, a droplet falling off her nipple onto his wrist.

“Probably more than once,” she agrees, running her hands up his stomach and over his chest, damp with fever-sweat and now the fluids leaking out of her. He still feels too warm, but possibly slightly less than before, though that very well could be because she's warmer now too, from exertion and proximity. Or a contact high, for all she knew.

He leans up and licks the cum from her breast, rolling his tongue over and around her nipple, and sucks slowly. He grunts when she playfully tweaks his scarred nipple in response. He never got it repierced but he's still more sensitive on that side. 

 

“But later, because…”

 

She rolls her hips up, back and onto him, sliding down onto his cock in one smooth motion that has him falling back, his spine arching off the mattress under her, his eyes rolling into his head on a startled  _ h-hhhaah--?! _ and his hands tightening down on her hips. 

 

“Because you caught your ssseh-hecond wind?” he asks hoarsely, shakily, and she smiles, bracing her hands on his broad chest.

“Oh yeah.”

He laughs, grins eagerly back, until a little side-to-side wiggle of her hips knocks the air out of him again in a shuddering gasp. 

 

Hm, yes let's do that one again, more of a circle? And again, and  _ again _ , building a smooth rhythm.

He lets her ride him, his hands resting lightly on her hips, just following her as she moves, letting her rut eagerly eagerly on his stomach until it isn't enough, until she rolls all her weight forward onto her hands, leaning over him. Her lekku fall forward over her shoulders and frame the way her breasts are pressed between her arms as she rolls her hips, grinding down, revelling in the way he fills her.

Apparently her shirt is in the way again, and one of his hands leaves her hip long enough to pull the front down under her breasts, pulling her down with it. Her sticky breasts  _ squish _ ridiculously against his chest, and she laughs into his mouth as he kisses her, wraps his arm around her waist. His hand on her hip curves under her ass, he pulls her up slightly and lets go, letting her drop back onto his cock so her snickers turn to a soft, pleased moan, her hands coming up to frame his face. 

That seems to be what he wants, and it  _ is _ what he likes best, to hold her close, take his time,  _ love  _ her… his free hand moves in long smooth strokes up her thigh, her side, her upper arm, then comes up to cup the back of her head and run all the way back down the length of her lek, root to tip, kissing her all the while. Soft and slow, following the shift and roll of her hips, the pulse and ripple of her cilia around his cock. She can't move much with his arm around her waist like a durasteel band, but then, she doesn't have to, does she? She just has to use her own flexibility to roll her hips and spine, to slowly fuck herself on his cock, and kiss him breathless. His other arm comes up around her back, lower, clinging to her as he kisses her deeply,  _ hungrily _ , nipping at her upper lip.

 

He groans aloud, frustrated, breaks off the kiss to mash his forehead against hers again.

“Not working, is it?”

“ _ No,”  _ he growls bitterly.

“Need it fast, or just rough, love?” she asks gently, running her fingers through the hair that has escaped his ponytail, though she pointedly doesn't still. She continues the slow rocking of her hips, the flex of her spine making her breasts and stomach rub against his chest.

_ “Yes,”  _ he snarls, and she gently kisses his forehead, the bridge of his nose, his lips.  _ “ _ Apparently _. Dammit.” _

 

More kisses, smoothing away his scowl. It's becoming difficult to think, her head swimming slightly from the biochemical reaction of his skin on hers, his mouth, hells, probably his  _ cum _ too at this point, Goddess knew there was enough of it.

“Then take your time  _ some other time _ , love,” she tells him, her hands moving from framing his face to knocking his head back against the mattress for emphasis to get it through his sweet, thick skull.  

 

It makes him laugh. 

 

“I know I already told you I love you, but I don't think I got the level of incredulous disbelief right the first time, beca--” 

“So keep telling me,” she says, and cuts him off with a warm, giggly kiss. “When you're  _ not  _ off your head on kath.” 

 

He kisses her hard, an affirmation, his arms tightening around her until she squeaks, and then pushes up on her hands, braced on his chest, to slam her hips down onto his.

She  _ squelches _ , her slit sopping wet and full of spent cum, and it does absolutely nothing to help her giggles.

The way he immediately arches under her, hands dropping to and squeezing down on her thighs with a ragged gasp, however, goes a  _ long _ way.

He knocks her arms out from under her with his forearm and hauls her back down by the front of her shirt, twisting it around his fist. His arms close around her waist again, and he resumes kissing her when he has her close enough. She doesn't get much of an opportunity to continue controlling things as his hands slide down her sides, curve around her ass and tilt her hips up and forward. The brush of his beard down her throat makes her hiss as he braces his feet and legs against the mattress and drives his hips up to meet hers hard enough that she'll feel it in the morning, an ache deep inside that would hurt  _ now  _ with anyone else.

 

But Kanan… 

 

Something about him, about the way he feels inside her, the way he tastes, the pressure and movement of hands on her body--it drives her higher and higher, until she can't hold herself up, until she falls against his chest and buries her face in the curve of his strong shoulder and the tangle of his hair.

She almost doesn't need his hand sliding down her spine and tailbone and farther, pressing hard, fast circles over her jil to tip her over the edge again. Some dim, delirious, nonsensically practical part of her notes that he really should  _ stop doing that, _ if they want to accomplish anything. He has to keep stopping to let her recover, loosen up again enough to let him move.

The rest of her doesn't give half a fat damn, because he's about to break his day-cycle record for getting her off, this time in the space of a few  _ hours _ . Tchin still hadn't uncurled from that last orgasm and she can barely see when her eyes snap open in surprise as he pulls her tight against his chest and rolls them right out of his bunk onto the floor. He takes the impact on his shoulders and carries on until she's under him again and crying out at the rough, sudden motion, the press of his body into and over and onto and around hers.

Another hungry, wet, bruising kiss before he sits up, and gets his hands under her knees, pulling her hips up off the cool durasteel. She can feel his cum and her slick combined drip down her tailbone and spine, too much for the ripple of her overworked cilia and he's too far away like this, towering over her. His hair falls into his wild eyes as she reaches for him, her fingertips just brushing the soft hair on the tops of his thighs. If she arched her back she could reach him, but it's too soon, even that bit of shift and flex of him inside her would be too much, as sensitive as she is, riding on too many endorphins and too much sex and wanting,  _ needing  _ more. The rough slide of his hands up her thighs to her hips with her legs slung over his elbows makes her nearly fold her spine in half anyway. She might have screamed. Might have come again. Might have died.

 

Things… blurred, after that. It comes back to her slowly, in dim, fever-warm waves, as she lies with his head on her stomach. They had gotten back into the bed at some point, before or after or when he had bent her over the side of it and let her tear a hole in the sheets with her clawing, grasping hands. She remembers digging her nails into the backs of his thighs when he slowed, or didn't, but it wasn't enough, and raking them down his back to make him growl low in his throat with his fingers pressed into her hips hard enough to bruise. She remembers locking her ankles around his hips, his shoulders, his  _ neck,  _ pulling him against her,  _ into _ her with her heels and her hands and her lips on his skin. She remembers the way he finally collapsed onto her with a broken sob, his arms around her chest, still inside her, and then didn't move again.

If it weren't for the fact that she can feel the shallow rise and fall of his chest against her hips and thighs, feel his pulse in his throat and his soft exhales on her stomach, she would be terrified. 

 

Instead she's just tired, sticky with sex and sweat, and  _ sore.  _ Goddess  _ bless _ she's sore. 

 

His hair is sticking to her stomach, with the sweat and everything else.

 

There's an ache deep inside her, not the sharp, dangerous feeling of something torn or broken, just… overworked, aching, and probably overly familiar with how a punching bag might feel. She's laying on her lekku, and there's pins and needles in her fingers and toes.

And her mouth feels like the inside of an  _ ashtray _ . She's actually thirsty enough that it's overriding the ache in her abdomen and hips and… everywhere. 

 

“Kanan…” Goddess, her voice is nearly gone, her throat hurts. “Need to move, love.”

 

He's completely unresponsive. Still breathing, but that seems like all he's capable of at the moment. No response even to her giggling at him when he flops limply back onto the bed without a sound after she carefully wriggled out from under him. 

 

Standing is… difficult, but doable, and she's capable of walking, with a little help from the wall, into the refresher to splash some cold water on her face and drink from her hands. Goddess, she's a  _ mess _ , dark marks from his mouth and hands scattered down her body from neck to knees and--yep, a flip of the lights confirms that she's not so much dotted with glowing splatters so much as  _ phosphorescing _ and her lekku are still flushed to the root even now and--oh, that explains  _ that… _

Tchin is still curled up,  _ cramped _ up, around the end of tchun tight enough to cut off the circulation at the tip, but trying to reach back and untangle them stretches things that don't want to be stretched, like… everything.

 

“Let me?” Kanan slurs from behind her, leaning against the doorway.

“You  _ really  _ don't understand the concept of ‘lie down before you fall down,’ do you?” she chides fondly, letting her hands fall to the sink for extra support.

“Door’s holdin me up fine,” he says stubbornly. “Checkin on you.”

“I'm fine, love--” she starts, turning to face him, but he scoffs, cutting her off and looking pointedly at the handprints bracketing her hips.

“Liar.” 

“Alright, not  _ fine _ but… I'm not… I'm... I will be,” she tells him softly, wincing and watching the way he's carefully staying back, not touching her, so she reaches for his hand. A small, scared part of her is incredibly relieved when he takes it. “Are you?” 

 

Now he goes to her, somewhat unsteadily but upright on his own, his arms going loosely around her waist to untangle her lekku, smoothing the cramps away. She mimics him, wrapping her arms around his waist to pull him close again, her hands spreading across his shoulderblades and the welts there. 

 

“Like a marathon as much as the next guy but… would rather it was our idea,” he mumbles, resting his chin on top of her head. His beard itches.

 

She nods and snuggles closer. Itching is fine, especially since he sounds a bit steadier. 

 

“Y’know what I’d kill for?” she murmurs into his chest.

“Tam d’Rer’s head on a pike?”

She snickers. “Well, yes, but--”

“Horns broken off and suitably applied beforehand, of course,” he assures her.

“You heard that, huh?” 

“Yep. Loved it.” 

“I was actually thinking 'huge bathtub.’”

 

He grunts a highly appreciative, longing agreement.

 

“Barring that, a refresher that isn't run on a reclaimer, with a hot water tank the size of the Ghost,” she continues, with relish. 

“Bet we could sit in the one we have for what, twenty minutes or so?” he offers tiredly. 

“Get closer to an hour if we share,” she counters.

 

Another affirmative grunt.

 

“Then lots of water.”

“And sleep.”

“Probably some food.”

_ “Sleep.” _

“You're going to fall asleep in the refresher, aren't you?” she laughs fondly.

“Betcha you do to.”

“Sucker’s bet.”

  
  
  



End file.
